[rescue] Apple to ditch IBM, switch to Intel chips

[Andrew Weiss]

On Jun 5, 2005, at 12:55 AM, Micah R Ledbetter wrote:

> On Jun 4, 2005, at 04:37, Skeezics Boondoggle wrote:
>
>
> I don't think this is very likely, at all. x86 chips themselves are
> totally separate from a lot of the PC-ness of a standard Dell; if
> Apple were going to switch to the x86 processor architecture, then
> I'm certain they would do away with things like the BIOS. Also, I'm
> even more certain that Apple will require a custom ROM image to be
> present in their hardware before the OS loads, like they do now. You
> wouldn't be able to just buy random crapola at the aforementioned
> JCCE and run OS X, just like you can't run OS X on IBM machines,
> Pegasos PPC boards, or what have you.
>
Apple machines haven't had a ROM in hardware for a long time.  All  
New World machines use a ROM in RAM file for Classic MacOS and OS X  
doesn't use a ROM file at all.


> An interesting side effect of doing away with the BIOS would be that
> a consumer would still be required to buy PCI cards and such made for
> the Mac (manufactured by Apple or a third party). If there's no BIOS
> in these x86 "Macs", then you'll still need Mac-specific video cards
> and controller cards for things like boot devices. As Linux/BSD has
> shown, a PC card will work in non-PC hardware if there's a driver for
> it, but it won't be available during boot.

I don't think Apple would make crippled/locked-in PeeCees either.   
You may argue that doing away with the legacy stuff is good (which it  
is)... but the market won't accept it... it'd be doing everything  
people who complain about Apple complain about... making a piece of  
open-hardware proprietary.  People will look at that and say why  
should I pay more for the same piece of equipment when I can get a  
much more flexible machine for cheap somewhere else.

>
> Just a couple of thoughts. I'll be as surprised as anyone if Apple
> actually "switches", but I'll eat my socks if they just sell OS X and
> go away from selling hardware completely.
>
>   - Micah

On that count you'd be right.

Andrew

"I BET WITH SOME LIQUID COOLING YOU COULD GET TO 500MHZ! OMGWTFBBQ!"  
-- Bill Bradford joking about what to do with Cyclequads